Tools to help you navigate airline baggage fees

Two sites do most of the math for you

CHICAGO (MarketWatch) — It’s easy to reckon what it will cost you to buy airfare from Chicago to New York, but try tacking on baggage fees without a cheat sheet and you’ll be at a loss.

“There is no standard,” said Alicia Jao, vice president of travel media for NerdWallet.com, which tracks travel and financial products. “That is the problem with the industry. It’s really up to travelers to figure it all out on their own.”

Fees add up to more than airfare

Almost all airlines will sock you if the bag is a tad too heavy than the general 50-pound limit or 60-inch size. The pain is sharper if you’re traveling outside the U.S. and Canada, so pack lightly for that Caribbean beach vacation.

Before you jump on Spirit Airlines, which offers airfares you can pay for with pocket change, do the math on what it will really cost you. The discount carrier throws down a complicated set of baggage-rate rules that vary by when you pay (online versus at the airport), what you’re carrying, and whether you’re a club member or an international flier.

“Obviously, the airlines want to make money on these fees, but they also want to discourage people from bringing heavy bags,” said George Hobica, chief executive of travel site Airfarewatchdog.com. Heavier bags add more weight to the plane, which adds to fuel costs.

Baggage fees have become the gift that keeps on giving for most airlines, which continue to tinker with charges as they reap revenue, both in total dollars and as a percentage of operating income.

The fees have become such a dependable and necessary source of revenues that even Southwest Airlines
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, which has been touting “Bags Fly Free” in its ads for two years, is embracing fees already in place at AirTran Airways. (Southwest does not charge change fees, another growing revenue stream for airlines.)

Southwest, which bought AirTran Airways last May, said it will keep the baggage and change fees for AirTran — which rang up almost $167 million in the first nine months of 2011 — until 2014.

Those fees and others, including seat-assignment fees and on-board sales of food, drinks, entertainment and even pillows and blankets, add up to about 32% of AirTran’s total operating revenue.

Compare that to Spirit Airlines, which generates almost 90% of its operating revenues from such ancillary charges, and Delta Air Lines
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which rang up 24% of its operating revenues from those extras in the first nine months of 2011, the most recent figures available from the U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics.

Complex rules

While Southwest doesn’t charge baggage or change fees, the airline collected almost 20% of operating revenue in that same period via add-on charges such as pet transportation, standby fees and sales of frequent-flier award miles.

Southwest’s “Bags Fly Free” holds for the first two bags, but the airline charges $50 for other luggage you might lug on, short of 10 bags. It’s an extra $50 for overweight bags and $50 on top of that, if necessary, for oversized bags.

Pretty straightforward stuff for most consumers who can do the addition easily in their heads.

Now think about how Delta arranges it fees. In its missive on baggage fees, the carrier notes that “you will incur separate fees for exceeding our size, weight, and quantity limitations.

“For example,” the airline states, “if an extra piece of baggage exceeds the weight and size limits, it will be subject to three fees: one for the extra bag, one for exceeding the weight limit, and one for going over the size restriction. Fees are charged for each additional bag, each way.”

That’s $300 above the cost of the airfare, the bevy of government and airport taxes and fees, and, if you’re going to Europe, the fuel charge.

“Overweight and oversized bag fees can be quite onerous,” Jao said.

And that doesn’t even speak to fees charged on golf bags (though not all airlines charge for those), medical equipment for doctors and nurses flying to rescue or relief missions, camera equipment for news and broadcasting agencies, or any number of odd-sized bags travelers must bring.

“It’s definitely going to cost you more as you check in more and more bags and the fee-processing structure changes,” Hobica said.

Airfarewatchdog.com updated its baggage-fee chart with a new pricing structure AirTran initiated in April for overweight and oversized bags. See the Airfarewatchdog chart here.

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